The Team House - This is What Losing Looks Like (Iran War Update) | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

This week we break down the collapsed ceasefire and week two of American strikes on Iran, from the deaths of US service members in Jordan to the Chinese navigation system suddenly making Iranian missiles far more accurate. We get into why the air campaign can't achieve its goals, the intelligence gaps limiting US targeting, Saudi Arabia's controversial nuclear agreement, and the vulnerability of Gulf desalination plants. The uncomfortable conclusion: Iran is going to get the bomb, ground troops aren't a real option, and this is now entirely about the Strait of Hormuz.Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSubscribe to our newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinJack's news outlet:⬇️https://thehighside.substack.com/Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️Jon's Twitter:https://x.com/jonathanhackettJon's LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettJon's books:https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettTwitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackettCheck out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQYoutube:https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️https://fogbow.com/Lobo Institute ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/Twitter ⬇️https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCALinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/Whitefish security summit ⬇️https://whitefishsecuritysummit.comFind Marc P here:https://x.com/MpolymerFind Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substack ⬇️https://amilburn.substack.com/Andy’s book ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Start02:47 Why the air campaign strategy isn't working05:03 Iranian missiles are suddenly hitting: the China GPS factor08:04 High-value assets at risk and why Hormuz is the real objective10:07 Targeting explained: why bridges, bases, and tit-for-tat strikes12:30 The Jordan strike, American deaths, and the coming US response14:49 Intel limits: what we can't hit and why17:15 Holding back cyber: saving the exquisite tools20:47 Stuxnet blowback and how Iran built its cyber capability22:57 Escalation options: Pickaxe Mountain, the Houthis, Bab el-Mandeb26:36 Saudi Arabia's balancing act and the 123 nuclear agreement29:57 "Iran will get the bomb" — accepting the new red line39:11 Mick Mulroy joins: who's feeding Iran targeting data41:19 Desalination plants as targets and the Gulf's water vulnerability50:50 What are our actual options?53:45 The ground troops question: a Vietnam-like commitment59:44 Israeli and US elections could reset everything01:03:28 Hezbollah vs. the Iraqi militias — the real threat01:07:13 Criticism, hate mail, and wrap-upBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here today with Jonathan Hackett and Andy Milburn. Mick Moroy possibly will likely be joining us in a little bit. You guys are seeing the same stuff I'm seeing. Ceasefire seems to have completely collapsed. We're on like day eight of American strikes, you know, on whether it's Iranian shipping or Iranian, you know, islands, different, different, different, um, targets. Iran has responded with shooting cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones at all of our bases in the region, which means, you know, shooting missiles against all of their neighbors. Two service members died in Jordan from that attack, from one of the attacks. One is missing. So, you know, this is like a real, you know, for people who think this is, you know, obviously so far away, but this is like real people's lives that are being lost on the Iranian side as well. Like, let's be frank, right? I'm sure we're not 100% accurate where we're shooting.

So, yeah, some bits, like the one quote that really like stuck to my craw a little bit was Caitlin Collins and CNN, who I think is probably one of the better White House reporters. Ask Trump. What did she? I shall be the hell that I have it. Hold on. This is a pretty glaring fucking quote, frankly. She asked, you know, the United States is bombing Iran again. You've been bombing Iran for months now.

Is this just a new normal for the American people? Which I feel like is a completely fair fucking question. And the president replied, we were in Vietnam for 19 years. We're here for four months. So I think we've done a lot. Um that kind of shit coming from the president is One of the

I know obviously it's Trump so like we're desensitized The crazy shit he says Um But he's talking about like actual fucking war And uh the way he just so blasé about it to me Frankly is offensive And I'm being as generous as I can be Because I have other words that I could totally use

Yeah it's a fucking joke frankly Um that this guy's the president and he's leading us into this fucking abyss the escalation ladder seems to be getting longer and longer every day there doesn't seem to be at no end in sight

so yeah what are you guys tracking Milburn let's let's let's let's I want you to go first I missed you I miss you too D thank yeah so you know I I think not I think

you know what we've we've talked about the strategy or lack they're off before in this program. It isn't simply us throwing rocks. You know, in fact, I know at least a couple of us were involved in planning for war with the wrong before. So, and are wondering why some of the assumptions and some of the risks identified in almost a decade of planning had been thrown out of the window, namely the

the anticipation that Iran would close the Straits of Hormuz, but also understanding the limits of an air campaign, and through no one's fault, it's just very difficult to track down the assets. We're trying to track down rocket launches, and now small boats, drone, places where drones are being stored, specifically, you know, to leap ahead what has changed about this phase of the war, to answer the question that's been asked the administration, what do you hope to gain out of these strikes?

The list of targets are specifically focused on Iranian assets that could interfere shipping in the Straits of all moves, at least until last night, right? So those were specifically radar sites, acquisition radar in the southern part of the country. And again, missile launches, places where intelligence were suggesting the Iranians were storing drones. And although I haven't seen this specifically, I assume also small boats. But all those assets are easy to move around and hide and decoy. disperse and especially in a country like Iran and the longer the war goes on the easy it is to do for them to disperse the remaining assets and so you know the strike against jordan last night

the the strikes against Kuwait are not a surprise what is perhaps surprising in this phase and john can perhaps jump in to to add some more amplification on this is the increased accuracy of Iranian missiles, right? And that is, I understand, mostly attributed to the fact that the Chinese are providing navigation system. It's no longer a GPS, John. Do you remember the term and it's B,

it's by do you, do you three or something? It's the frequency-hopping. Yes, the Chinese frequency hopping. version of the GPS and I should probably Google that and we have various student members of audience who will who will be able to jump in but it's but anyway B3A is what we call it it's it's and the network is called the Bidu 3 the military grade signal we call B3A and so very quickly my understanding is that civilian GPS is you know obviously It's a fixed known frequency.

It's very jammable. In the 12-day war in June 2025, both Israel and the U.S. were jamming Iranian GPS-guided munitions very hard, and it worked. GPS-guided systems reportedly failing at a rates of over 70 percent early in the conflict. Now, 98 percent of them are getting through. So that's a concern. So although we're in a new phase of the wall, although we've narrowed our targeting options, the targets themselves are easy to disperse, and on the Iranian side, they're getting more accurate. So that is, that's certainly a concern. And, you know, the last thing I'll say is that piling on more strikes, again, might give us a feeling of satisfaction. But as we've seen, we've also amped up the risk.

And the Iranians are going after, and I haven't got confirmation of this on the strike on the base in Jordan yesterday. I forget the name of the base. It's about 60 clicks from Amman. But the Iranians are going after specific assets that we have, not strike aircraft on the ground, but they're going after the 80s. WACC2 centuries, they're going after the KC-135 tankers, just like they did in Saudi Arabia. So for those of you who like CERGRAGravity analysis, these are the critical requirements, right? The high-value, low-density assets that we have, and we've got about 75% of these assets in the region right now, so they're all vulnerable.

And we only have a limited number of them. So the Iranians know what they're doing. They're going after these assets and increased accuracy. And I'm not being chicken little here. I'm just saying that all of this suggests that this last round of the war isn't going to be quite as easy as perhaps some people think to simply shut down the Iranians by piling on more munitions. And at the end of the day, you know, what do we, what's our first priority? Our first priority is Hormuz. We're not even talking about enriched uranium anymore.

We're not even talking about the proxies, even though, by the way, the Iraqi Iranian-backed proxies have only grown stronger during this war. And anyone who's observed the aftermath of the Khomeini's funeral, we'll see a lot of the traffic control in Iraq was these militias. We're not even talking about those things. We're talking specifically about Hormuz. And the thing is, even if we manage,

through all our naval assets in the region, two carriers, over 20 surface vessels, untold number of aircraft, et cetera, et cetera. Even if we managed to force an opening in the Straits of Hormuz, the effect on the global economy remains because commercial, we're talking about commercial ships. It's still high risk until the Iranians agree not to strike ships. And there's some kind of negotiated settlement. The problem continues. And that is the issue I think we're facing right now.

So again, the tactics don't fit in any coherent overarching policy. And that's the bottom line. Any overarching policy that can be achieved through the tactics that we're using. Yeah, and I would also add on to that in addition to the center of gravity component of this targeting that we're seeing. People are asking, why are there these tip for strikes going on? Why are they hitting bridges in Iran? why is Iran hitting U.S. bases in Jordan? Like this question is from the public on trying to understand, you know, why are these targets, the targets? One part of it is what you mentioned, Andy,

that they're doing operational level analysis of target packages and deciding both the U.S. and Iran, both deciding about, you know, if I strike a bridge that links this base to this base, that has a stronger impact than if I just hit an aircraft at that base. And at the same time, If you look back to Operation Allied Force in 1999 in Kosovo and in the Balkans generally, Bosnia and so on, we had a multi-discipline intelligence approach to targeting in that conflict. We had not only air assets, which was a massive air campaign in Kosovo. We also had a very extensive human intelligence network inside of Kosovo that was helping us to identify and validate targets. So there were some targets that we already knew about, like military bases, which are

fixed and pretty, you know, slow to change on a spreadsheet. But we also had new locations like point of origin sites when the enemy would be launching mortars or artillery, which they can move around very easily in relation to bases. We'd have human sources on the ground who would say, hey, that truck, although it was at X location today, now it's at Y location right now. So we'd be able to tell the pilots in the air, hey, adjust fire dynamically and go strike this point of origin site that we've noticed with our imagery intelligence and with our signals intelligence. We also have human intelligence telling us that that's actually where they are and that's actually what it is that we think it is. In Iran, we don't have this. So we're relying very heavily on signals intelligence

and imagery intelligence to say that looks like a transporter erector launcher. It looks like it's there right now and it looks like it has a weapon on it. We strike it and then we don't really know what that strike did to it because we can't go validate with battle damage assessment. And we can't also say how many more they have left and other things like that that human intelligence can tell us, but that the other two disciplines alone have a hard time being really forceful on. The reason I mention that is because you look at why did Jordan hit Moafak Salty Air Base or MSAB, which is in Jordan. This base is well known.

When I was in Jordan, we used to joke that this was the largest land-based aircraft carrier that the United States has in the Middle East because most of our air assets were at Moffak-Salti Air Base, separately from Qatar, which is where Air Force's Central Command is at, and there's a lot of air assets in Qatar. Qatar has been hit multiple times during this conflict. But MSAB, that base has been there a very long time. That's a well-known target. There's plenty of open-source satellite imagery of Moffat-Salti airbase.

You can look it up on Google and see it. The huge airfield there, lots of military, U.S. military infrastructure there. So from an Iranian perspective, it's kind of a low-cost strike in terms of intelligence because they don't really need to validate much to know that if they lob an intermediate range ballistic missile at it, they're going to hit something that's American. Now, the problem here is they don't know what exactly they're going to hit. And my suspicion is they did not intend to kill Americans in this strike. They probably meant to hit American assets, fixed assets, and that was not the goal because

they know that by killing Americans, American military forces are highly sensitive to casualties. When Americans die, we tend to respond with overwhelming force. They know this firsthand because the reason Qasem Soleimani is dead is because two months before that, Americans were killed in Syria, a contractor and active duty members were killed, and we launched and assassinated their most important military commander in response. And we have typically done that not just against Iran, but against many other examples, including in Vietnam, where most of our overwhelming responses that were dynamic in nature, not planned ahead, but by dynamic in nature, were in response to U.S. casualties like this.

So I would expect to see a larger U.S. response than we have. expect over the evening, we saw a strike on a couple of facilities, an IRGC facility. I don't think that's the end of the story. I think there will probably be increases in retaliation from this that the U.S. is probably trying to put together right now to consider, okay, how do we respond to this proportionally based on how we understand proportional, not how the adversary understands it, but how does the U.S. military understand that? So I wouldn't think this is over yet. And on the tit for tat part of it, those intel limitations are. real. So the U.S. can only hit what it understands. So if the U.S. doesn't understand, let's say,

a underground facility, we can't just bomb it. We have to know what we're hitting. Like when you're putting a weaponeering package together and you're having the air officer actually sit there with you and talk through the targeting as far as the intel side, you're actually picking strike points. You're saying, what are the locations on this facility that are the best, the weakest to hit or the locations that if we hit it will cause damage in a particular direction. There are lots of considerations. It's not just dropping a bomb. So a lot of these facilities, we might not be able to strike now because we lack knowledge of what's going on inside that facility and around that facility. So we won't hit everything that's as valuable as we want to

hit yet without that human intelligence on the ground. So that's going to be a limitation where you're going to see probably a lot of infrastructure strikes, bridges, water purification, barracks, fixed military assets, because those are things we understand with limited information. You're not going to see strikes on, let's say, a G2 intelligence headquarters in Tehran. because even though we are striking a lot, we are still trying to limit civilian casualties as much as we can. And when you're looking at that G2 headquarters, you don't really know what's in the buildings around it. So you don't know which kind of weapon to use to destroy that building to make a blowup, to make it implode versus explode and things like that. So you're going to probably see those larger headquarters entities left off the target list for now,

until we understand more about those targets so that we can ensure that we're hitting them the right way with what our doctrine says. And next to that, the GPS issue that you mentioned, Andy, so there's actually three different major GPS-like networks in the world. There's the free world GPS, which is GPS, global positioning system. There's the Russian version, which is the GNSS, which is just like our GPS, but it's a Russian-controlled satellite array that the Russians can use. Even if our GPS goes down, the Russians will still have GPS and vice versa. This is a Cold War development. as we were developing our space program, which was a cover for our nuclear program, our intercontinental ballistic missile nuclear delivery program, the Russians are doing the same thing. You need GPS for that. So the Russians had GNSS for that. China was late to the game, but China also had BDS, which is the Baidu that you were talking about, Andy. So these are three different independent arrays of GPS controlled networks. Iran is relying on China's network, not on Russia's, but on China's network to get a lot of accurate information. So even if we try to jam Iran using our GPS, which sometimes they do, depending on what the equipment is that they're using,

there are areas that we can't jam as easily because it would require, whenever you jam something, there's a diplomatic component to that. If we jam a Chinese system, we are technically in an act of war with China by blocking their communication system. So there's going to be a calculation made, is it worth blocking China's GPS for us to harm Iran? And if we could harm Iran somehow without blocking the GPS, maybe we choose the somehow option, even though it's less, because we don't want to implicate China into this consideration. So there will be some calculation there going on with, you know, what's the cost and benefit of using this now? And also, some of these technologies we have to work with GPS in particular, we don't want to use it in a conflict like this because we're

saving it for later in a bigger conflict, because some of these things are very, very technical and sophisticated and depend on the enemy not knowing we have it. And if we use it now, we can never really use it effectively again. We could still use it, but just wouldn't be as surprising and overwhelming and important as it would be if we waited, say in a nuclear war with Russia, for example. So there's also that calculation being made, just like Winston Churchill decided not to announce that we had broken enigma as early as we had. And British civilians died because of this, because the importance of just having that as a secret was way more powerful than just telling the world that we had done so. And so there are still things like that in the world, including zero-day vulnerabilities. We haven't

seen very much talk about cyber attacks against Iran right now. And there's probably a degree of keeping those zero-day vulnerabilities secret until the future time when we actually need to use these more powerful tools. And we've just calculated that this is not the time, which at the operational level is a very wise move, I think, because it's always about measuring risk. You can never eliminate it. And you can never, you know, use everything you've got right now because the value of it goes away the moment you use it, just like nuclear weapons. A nuclear weapon is powerful because it's not used. The moment you use it, the threat is completely understood and completely on the table, and it changes the game. And the game is only good in your favor if you don't use your nukes.

Hey, guys, I want to tell you tonight about my new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, coming out June 9th. I think, like a lot of you, I read in high school, the short story, the greatest game, which is almost a century old at this point, but it's the classic premise of man-hunting man for sport. This book is based off of that a little bit, but also on stories that I have heard over the years about safari guides that have actually taken hunting parties, wealthy people, hunting poachers in West Africa. That idea kind of cooked off in my mind when I was asked to write a novel and get back into writing fiction again. And this book is about a ranger with the Ranger Reconnaissance Company who's on a mission in West Africa and gets kidnapped and hunted for some. sport by a group of wealthy tech billionaires. I had a lot of fun writing this book, and I think you'll have a good time reading it. It's a quick, fast and furious, fast-paced action novel,

and I hope you all check it out. It's up there. You can find it wherever books are sold, the hard copy, the hardback, the soft cover, and also the Kindle e-book edition. We'll have some links down in the description for you. The book comes out June 9th. And I hope you all let me know what you think of it. That's a great, great point about cyber. You know, the one assumes that that is something that we would be integrating at this level. You know, John, I mean, to your point, though, about not using cyber because we're worried about exposing methods, I mean, I'm not sure, you know, explain that one to me.

I'm not sure I buy that. You know, surely we would integrate cyber regardless. We've already conducted cyber operations against Iran in conjunction with Israel right in the past. Why would we not do so now, especially now that we know that the Chinese have given them that, you know, Bidu systems? When we're trying to, right, we're trying to sidestep. We realize jamming's no longer as effective. I assume that's one of the reasons why we've changed our targeting, I say we collectively, the United States,

to kind of node-by-node targeting going after the surveillance towers, like the other day, they hit the Chabahar Surveillance Tower and southern Iran. So we realize, obviously, what is happening. I just can't, I mean, I just don't, I'm not sure I buy. that we're waiting on, we're reluctant to use cyber at some level. Surely we can use cyber operationally without perhaps exposing our methods. I think the more normal, let's say, cyber operations are probably going on. What I'm talking about are the more exquisite one-time use

things like we saw in Venezuela when the president was taken. There was a massive cyber attack that night that blacked out the city. That's the kind of thing that you can only use one time, because the way that it's used, the way that it's implanted, once it's used, now it's known. And I would not be surprised if there were things in Iran that could be switched on and off in a way that would spectacularly turn the country off in a way that be advantageous for us in various ways. But the moment that we use it, we can't use it against Russia and we can't use it against China anymore because it will be understood, analyzed, exploited, turned around. we had the same problem with Stuxnet when we attacked Natanz, the cyber attack in 2007.

The reason Iran developed an offensive cyber capability that is very formidable is because they reverse engineered the Stuxnet virus that we used in 2007, and they used it against Saudi Aramco in the Shammun attack, which brought down, it was the largest cyber attack in Saudi history and destroyed huge amounts of infrastructure and oil output on the night of power during Ramadan on when they use some other cyber tools to analyze pattern of life and identify that that was the best time to attack. That tool was a child tool of Stuxnet. Later, they also reverse engineered something called Flame, which was a cyber tool that the

NSA independently developed that was very, very capable of doing a lot of things, let's say. They reverse engineered that, and they've been using it ever since, and we can't defeat it because the way it was designed, it was designed to be undefeatable. It could be reverse engineered, but it can't be stopped, but the way that it actually works. So there's that idea of once it's in the wild, what happens next? What if North Korea gets their hands on this technology and uses it against us or against Australia, for example? So there's this concern of the effects beyond the battle space of using the more exquisite, let's say that the 1% tools that we have. The other tools are out there for sure.

They're being used right now, absolutely. But then there's the cost of what happens once we fire this shot. Will it be fired at us too? So, I mean, the media's reporting that Trump's being briefed on, well, obviously is being briefed on military options in response to the U.S. deaths. I mean, something has to be seen to be done, right? And I suppose cyber, another aspect of cyber, which may seem counterintuitive, but nevertheless is true, is it doesn't have, it doesn't have that kinetic political effect, right? If you're playing to a global and domestic audience, often the effects of cyber are not clearly evident

and purposefully not publicize, which in a sense, if you're looking for, especially with a war that's less than popular and you wanted to show that you're in charge, it's perhaps not as satisfying an instrument to use as kinetic targeting. But I know, so, But talking about tit for tat, so we, you know, undoubtedly the options available,

and there aren't a wide range of options, I mean, going off to Iranian infrastructure, right? Certainly energy infrastructure, another round against Iran's nuclear sites, or perhaps targeting one of the underground facilities, like the one at, what's it called pickaxe Mountain? You know, perhaps going in again with bunker buster, there's something that's going to really make the news. I mean, it does appear as though, obviously the military is preparing for those options.

There's reportedly, I mean, it's all over Twitter. So 30-free aerial refueling tankers, KC-1-35s, crowding the Tarmac and Ben-Gurion Airport, all right, in preparation for something. But at the same time, the problem is, again, I don't want to appear to be chicken little, but the problem is that the Iranians too appear to be telling the Houthis, hey, stand by for you. And Huthi's moving assets into position, being directed to move assets into position to give the BAM, the Bandal Mandeb, a good shalacking, should the U.S. take targeting to the next step. So now we would have both borderways threatened and effectively closed off. And meanwhile, Iranian strikes on Kuwaiti border posts, oil platform,

reportedly a desalination plant too, although that didn't make the news, but I saw it on X. Kuwaiti consulate in Basra, two Emirati tankers. notably Saudi Arabia has not been hit in this round, but they've been issuing they issued another condemnation today against all of these attacks. And I likely may well consider if the Houthis get involved this as a direct attack on Saudi Arabia. Yeah, so I wanted to mention, sorry, John, yeah, I did see a little bit of chatter talking about, like us letting Saudi Arabia off the chain against the Houthis. I don't know if that's plausible or actually, you know, in the cards. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Sorry, John.

Well, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular, Qatar obviously has been negotiating and helping to negotiate between various parties in this conflict, but Saudi foreign ministry officials, high-level officials, attended the funeral for Khomeini, which is significant. If you look at who attended the funeral and at what rank were they? This is a very interesting analytical exercise if listeners want to look it up. It's very fascinating actually to look through like who sent who and who are they. The Saudis did send some significant folks. And if you remember before the war started, Saudi Arabia had been increasing its steps toward, let's say a detente with Iran that Muhammad bin Salman had been working toward and trying to do to basically calm tensions in the region after especially

Nimmer, Nimmer was assassinated a few years previously, or killed, executed a few years previously. That was a major problem for Iran and Saudi relations. And since then, both countries have been trying to kind of fix that damage. And I think seeing the Saudis at the funeral signals that that hope is still there, because Saudi Arabia seeks to benefit by regional stability, whatever that means. And the Saudis have their own interest. In fact, you know, there's something called a one, two, three agreement, which is a special nuclear agreement between the U.S. and a foreign partner about how nuclear research and development should go. The U.S. is negotiating a one, two, three agreement with Saudi Arabia right now, which will allow the Saudis to enrich uranium and

plutonium. And interestingly, there are no restrictions on weaponization on this particular agreement. Every one, two, three agreement is different between countries. When I was in Jordan, we were negotiating a one, two, three agreement with Jordan. There's had a weaponization cap on it or a restriction on it. The Saudis negotiated one without it, which is a pretty big deal and also shows that You know, that's Saudi Arabia trying to fix itself in the region as a power. And they have said, Mohammed bin Salman himself said, you know, if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia is getting one to. And I mentioned all that context because Saudi Arabia cares about Saudi integrity, sovereignty,

and stability, price stability for their country. And so they're looking at this like, how do we balance against all these competing interests? We have this very powerful neighbor, Iran. We also have Iran controlling some elements inside of Yemen. But we also have shared interests in OPEC and oil prices and economics in the region. So Saudi Arabia is playing a diplomatic, not necessarily a game, but they're being careful about how exactly do they commit to either side and what kind of side do they take and how do they fit into this, just like Qatar is doing, but for different reasons.

And I think the attendance at the funeral kind of indicates that. And with the Houthis, maybe Saudi Arabia is allowed to be unrestrained, but does that mean they will be unrestrained? That's a question for the Saudi government to make the decision on. not the U.S. to tell them, hey, go fight the Houthis. Instead, it's going to be a Saudi decision about how much do we actually do here because we do care about the day after the war. After the war ends, we still need to find some common ground with whatever Iranian government remains after this war. So we can't go too far and too hard because there could be repercussions.

And it's a similar concept to what happened with UAE and Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where there were divisions on how those two states decided to prosecute the war in Yemen, with the Saudis deciding one way and the Emirati is deciding to remain. And that's a very interesting thing to think about because those states do care about the day after the war much more than the West and the United States cares about it, I think. Yeah. And, you know, from a Saudi perspective, it makes perfect sense, of course, because I think, and it would be interesting, you know, John, I don't know who you feel about this, but I mean, I don't, we're not going to stop Iran from getting the bomb. I mean, we aren't.

Eventually Iran will get the bomb. The prize is too evident. To be a member of the club brings such prestige, but it brings invulnerability, right? Look at North Korea. And it's just too difficult to actually prevent Iran from doing so. I mean, we've done our best at this stage. It's not as though we did those strikes back in June as a. warning to the nuclear program. I mean, it was a wholehearted attempt to eliminate Iran's

nuclear program. But for all the reasons we've talked about on this program, that's, we've probably, by launching Midnight Hammer, again, not a criticism necessarily, but by launching Midnight Hammer, the fact that it failed turned a near-impossible task, probably into an impossible one. Undoubtedly, the Iranians have learned from that strike. They learned very quickly, right? they've learned how to better conceal, they've learned to, through their centrifuges, the enriched uranium, it gets dispersed, and even the, you know, the technology we have cannot, cannot put a halt to the program. I think my feeling is, without being an expert in that field, that we're just not going to prevent Iran from doing so. You know, diplomatically, publicly, publicly, We always say that this is, it's unacceptable. But what do we really focus on? Probably what we focus on are the problems that are most imminent to US interests or Moose is number one.

Number two are the proxies, but specifically, I mean, not Hezbollah, not even the Houthis, although they are a second. The number one proxy that we should be concerned about of the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq who've launched something like 180. 80 attacks on U.S. forces in the last three years, I mean, significant amount. I mean, and are only gaining traction in Iraq, that's, that's a, you know, after Hamous, that's the biggest issue. Again, I'm not saying that we tell Iran, hey, don't worry about it. But this looks to me, perhaps, as a way of at least hedging our bets, all right? So there are those who would argue, even if Iran gets the bomb, it's not an existential threat, not even to Israel, even though we hear Israel say all the time, it's an existential threat.

Israel's got the bomb too. But if you can enable or turn a blind eye to other regional partners in enriching uranium and developing their own program, then arguably you help a little bit balance the the nuclear balance of power right in the region. I mean, I'm not suggesting that's our work here, but undoubtedly that's in everyone's mind. So this agreement is on Trump's desk. I'm my understanding he hasn't signed it yet. As John pointed out, it's significant

because until this point, the 2009 deal with UAE was considered the gold standard. And for that, UAE got the civil nuclear cooperation but explicitly gave up the right to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. Under this protocol, Saudi Arabia would not agree to do either of those things. So, you know, the U.S. is currently fighting a war against Iran. Trump himself has framed at least Pali as being about stopping Iran from using enriched uranium to build a weapon. At the same time, there's kind of perhaps the realization.

that this isn't really going to be possible. So now sitting on his desk is a deal that would let Saudi Arabia, Iran's principal regional rival, enriched uranium domestically with weaker safeguards than the standard Washington itself set for UAE. So you could credibly say this is all a deliberate decision and an acceptance of the fact that we can't stop Iran from crossing that red line. So perhaps we've moved the red line for other partners in the region.

Yeah, and I think if Saudi Arabia began enriching uranium, it would be crazy to think that Iran would not try to do so again. Just from a purely realist, you know, like we in the West, we love political realism and the realist, you know, theory of international relations. It's like a textbook example of, okay, step one, Saudi Arabia enriches uranium. Step two, Iran enriches uranium. This is exactly how states think and work as states as black boxes. Like, forget the emotional issues within the regime and ideology and religion. Just pure political action. Like, why would you not do it?

It would not make sense. Especially when Israel already has over 100 nuclear weapons and has not signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty or the biological weapons controls or any of these other treaties and controls that other states have signed and have not followed perfectly but have still signed them and those are still real. Israel just refuses to sign them at all. which kind of signals like what Israel is going to do if they want to use these, they will use them. And if now Saudi Arabia has it, again, the principal rival besides Israel, now you have these two

states that have both interests in keeping you out of the game. You're going to want to play the game. And you're going to do it clandestinely because you don't want it to be stopped. So instead of stopping them and scaring them into not enriching uranium, we're going to actually be forcing them deeper and harder to find. And they will be doing it in a way that will be more difficult for us to stop. They'll also build alliances that may be surprising to us so that they can gain access to material and information that they might not already have or has been eliminated or destroyed since 2012 after Israel started assassinating Iran's nuclear scientists. We may see them make alliances with countries we wouldn't expect. China is a great example of that.

China is an atheistic communist country. Iran is a Shia ideological, you know, religious state and their closest ally is China. That's not because they agree. with Chinese atheist communism. It's because China is willing to be on their side and help them in this world where they're isolated. Just like in Sudan, Iran, the IRGC, built a Navy base in Sudan. Sudan was their greatest regional partner for in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The IRGC Navy trained all of Sudan's Navy. After Omar al-Bashir was removed, the Emirates went into Sudan and started co-opting the Sudanese government toward the Emirati side, and Iran lost a toehold there in northeast Africa. So that's just something.

to think about like regional politics are very real here it's not about ideology it's about how do i keep my state strong vis-a-vis your state and the nuclear issue is the ultimate pinnacle issue for these states jockeying for what power means to them and if if my adversary has a nuclear weapon you better believe i'll try to get one too and that's how they're going to look at it i mean it would be kind of crazy to think otherwise. Would Israel be okay with Saudi Arabia, you know, having the door open essentially to getting a bomb? Certainly not. I think there's going to be lobbying from the Israeli side to go against that, but ultimately it's U.S. decisions about what do we want power structures to look like in the Middle East. We have a lot of basing access and overflight with Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain,

those states all have a seat at the table. They get a voice and they get a vote. It may not be as strong as Israel sometimes, but it is something and is meaningful. And those states can band together and say, hey, we want X. Israel might say, you can't have it. And the U.S. says, well, unfortunately, both of you can't get what you want, I'm going to give half of X to you guys and stop the other half because of this other pressure or some other consideration. So it'll come down to what do all these states say and what do U.S. interests look like at that time. And remember OPEC is very important, but we have a new change with OPEC, Emery, Emery, and departed OPEC. This is a really interesting development that will affect how the U.S.

operates in the Middle East because it's going to affect economics globally. And the question is, what happens with OPEC going forward vis-a-vis these nuclear discussions? Because it's an energy issue fundamentally. Nuclear power is an energy issue. The France's energy, 25% of it is nuclear power. So ultimately, you know, in the future, after the Emirates and these other Gulf nations try to divest themselves of dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear energy is going to become very important for those countries, and OPEC will become less and less relevant over time, and that's something that they are considering, and something the U.S. is also thinking about. Mick Mulroy, hello.

Sorry, gents. It's been one of those days, as you guys already know, I'm sure you're already talking about it. It's just jumping from one to the next to the next. What is mainstream media talking about? Obviously, the deaths of our service members in Jordan. which is tragic, unfortunately expected, that it's going to happen as these things escalate. And thoughts, obviously, to the family and friends of this and the one missing,

which I'm not quite sure. I understand how one is missing, but perhaps it's just the damage done to the location where they were present. One thing I'd bring up on that, I don't know if you guys have already covered it, but I want to know who's providing targeting information to the Iranians because it's it's it's it they're not this good right so we did talk about that a little bit yeah good what was your guys well I don't want you to I recast what you already talked to the to the audience about but my concern is it's China Russia both and China right I would imagine so yeah I would imagine the intelligence community's been tasked with finding out, determining it. And if it's in fact the case, there needs to be some kind of consequences. So I'm not saying we've got to war with China or anything. But yeah, we've got to protect our service men and women at all costs.

And if they get this targeting data that's allowing them to hit precise targets like that, we need to address it. But the Russians did the same thing with the GRU in Afghanistan. If you remember, they were putting out information. on U.S. forces and things. And China has already provided imagery intelligence using their proprietary satellites that are not commercially available for Iran

at the outset of the war. So it would be, you know, par for the course to expect them to continue doing that. And the Iranians, we mentioned they're using the Chinese version of GPS that's harder to jam on our end. All right. Yes.

And other than that, I mean, it really does look like we're headed toward major escalation. I mean, if we're not already there, right? And from all of the publicly available information on the flow of, you know, the airflow, etc., this looks like it's going to go up and it's going to be prolonged. So we're looking at a – and then, of course, we have the other shoe to drop when it comes to increasing direct attacks on ships in the Red Sea, by the Houthi's, you know, strikes. Yeah, one important point that I did talk about this morning.

you know, we're hitting facilities infrastructure in Iran, right? Like, including potentially desalienization plants. As I'm sure Jonathan can tell you, Iran doesn't rely on desalienization plants near as much as the Gulf countries. Like Kuwait's like 90%. It comes from water. It comes from the sea to desalunization. And I think like the Oman is about 80%, 70% in Saudi Arabia. that I was looking at, and maybe around 50% in the UAE, there's like entire cities that would

have to be evacuated if they successfully target a lot of desalilization plants in the Gulf. Right. So this is this is not parity when it comes to reliance on that. And Iran's clearly saying they're going to hit economic targets, including energy and decentralization plants. And I think they already did in Kuwait. And just to put that on there, Mick, it's 3% of Iran's water comes from desalinized water. There you go. Didn't know that. So 90, Kuwait, three.

And I don't know what the plan would be if they successfully knocked out the desalalization plants in some of these countries. In Iran, those desalonization plants are generally all in the south right by the Straits of Hormuz because those are kind of isolated coastal communities that don't have access to the same mountain water resources that the rest of the country has. So by taking those out, it's a very localized target deck that has almost no impact strategically on the overall military situation in Iran. Yeah, it's interesting. That was about a year ago.

There was a meeting here at the embassy and talking about various threats and what might precipitate basically an audit evacuation of U.S. and other foreign national and they covered a variety of threats, but they are sitting next to a Brit who works for an oil company here. And he leaned over and he said, hey, they haven't touched the most serious, which is if Iran goes after desalination plants, he said that changes the whole game.

And so you're kind of seeing that. It's an interesting point, and it's probably one that wouldn't have occurred to us, maybe. but it's talking about critical infrastructure, number one and number two, it is particularly vulnerable. These plants are easy to hit, and they tend to be well within a missile range. And, you know, in a country like all these countries, right, with the air defense assets available, it's really hard to cover these dispersed sites against multiple types of threat. that's part of the problems we're seeing along with the, you know,

increased accuracy of Iranian missiles. And then to mix point about the Houthis, that's particularly a concern. It's, you know, the trigger point for that could well be the U.S. up in the anti and hitting Iranian infrastructure. We had a senior Houthi official this week. saying, you know, if the current situation gets worse, we're going to close the BAB al-Mendip straight. And we're going to have an alliance with Iran.

And we've already seen, you know, after Yemeni forces bombed the Sinar airport runway, right, a couple of weeks ago to block an Iranian delegation flight, flight from landing, the Houthis blamed Saudi Arabia for it, even though it was actually Yemen's own government forces, and they retaliated by firing ballistic missile salvo at Apa airport in southern Saudi Arabia. So now the Houthis are saying that there will be an outright siege on Saudi Arabia and that they intend to paralyze all Saudi airports if there is any more interference with those flights.

So that could be there's an additional possible trigger. And then on the shipping side, obviously there'd be. reported attacks and commercial vessels near the ban Bandal Mendeb and off Hudea in the last couple of weeks and plus a separate incident was Saudi-backed Yemeni forces intercepted a boat smuggling weapons manufacturing components for the bound for the hoofies in the same street so you've got attacks going both ways already in the street and that's yeah again deep salination plants, increased accuracy of Iranian missile targeting, and now the threat to the bam, the escalation isn't all going to be one-sided. That's, I think, the problem we're dealing

with. And plus about five years ago, if you remember, the Saudi intelligence headquarters was struck by a drone that was either, I think it was Qatib Hezbollah or Yemen, but they had the precision capability five, six years ago to hit deep inside of Saudi Arabia at fixed targets that they were aware of. They haven't forgotten that. In fact, they've gotten better. And as you mentioned, Andy, they were receiving new parts to actually help make their weapons smarter, you know, putting electrical components on there to make the rockets more precise, to make the speed more correct, to make the trajectory better. So they're actually getting better at every component of how these weapons work so that when they are used, they're going to have better and better capability.

They're also learning each time they use one of these weapons, they're doing lessons learned and thinking about, okay, last time we fired this, X, Y, and Z happened, how do we get around that problem there? How do we defeat this? And with the air defenses, as you mentioned, the only real way to have a successful envelope of air defense is to have air defense systems physically located at all the target locations. And it can't just be one type. It can't just be, let's say, a Jericho air defense missile. It has to be something that can hit at every single distance and trajectory and altitude because there are multiple different ways that these can enter the atmosphere and land on a target. Some of our systems like,

Patriots can only intercept a particular, you know, vector of that envelope. We need other things like the air, like the Iron Dome to cover these gaps. And they understand this. It's all math. They understand, you know, this weapon fires at this speed, at this number of degrees. That means if I fire at this angle, I can penetrate that pocket because I know they have these three types of air defenses that can only defend 90% of the envelope, leaving 10% open. And so this is something that they're understanding. And those rocket motors they're using, them to actually adjust the rocket as it reenters to go between that gap in the air defenses. And we actually saw that in Jordan, the way that that intermediate range ballistic missile

was used, it was actually adjusted in flight to strike in a particular way. And that's something that they did conceptually know how to do, but they hadn't been really using it very much. And they just used it now, which means we should expect them to use it more. It was very successful. Yeah, I mean, the Saudis are really, really good with the, they've got their Patriot batteries and they are excellent at, I mean, their air defense system, their air defense guys are selected among the best of their intake for obvious reasons because they are effectively outworn

more than any other service here. But the problem, of course, is the equipment. It's the same problem that we, the U.S. are dealing with. And the acquisition problem with a drone, The Shahhead type drone flies low, you know, so in kind of 60. I mean, it's from about, you know, 150 feet up to, I don't know, a thousand feet or so, right? And it's low with a radar signature, the size of a large bird. And that's exactly the profile, that conventional radar, to include Patriot Acquisition radar, is not good at capturing. And, you know, these things get lost in the ground clutter,

and then you disperse them. You're going to get, you know, you're going to get them. You're going to get through, especially as we talked about with their increased methods of combining drones with missiles. Yeah, it's, I would say it's an impossible target set to eliminate the threat, but it's certainly extremely difficult. So the question is, what are we going to do?

There's not great options. And it's hard to see, you know, we're not going to give up. That's strategically suicidal. Can we endure the pain of dramatically increased energy costs? looks like we're going to have to. Can we do things to put more pressure on the regime? Absolutely. But the question is, how long will it take to get enough pressure that they would actually kind of bend to our will and agree with something more in line what's acceptable to us? Like secondary sanctions, pushing that, trying to cut off the ground, you know, logistical

corridors that they resupply and obviously provide some economic benefits, just like we're doing with the maritime and the blockade. I don't know how long it's going to take, right? And I do think, you know, obviously Iran thinks that they can play up the political issues this cause, which I think is true. But that's going to lead up to the election day in November. What happens after that? Right? Their leverage, if they have any, and I think they do, kind of goes away after. that, right? Because what happens happens in the election. And it's, it is, and then there's no more election for President Trump and there's no more election for his party, why he's still in office. So, I mean, it just seems like it's going to escalate substantially and expand. What I mean by expand

is, we're already talking about it. The consequences of the Gulf. I don't know what they would do if they do see not only their energy. infrastructure is targeted, which it already has been and it can be. And that'll increase the, you know, the issue with worldwide energy, uh, lack of supply, but also the actual capacity to stay in the country. Like Andy's talking about and Jonathan, you know, no water can't, can't live in a desert, right? So, uh, this is going to go from some of these, you know, beautiful cities to completely unpopulated. if that happens. I don't want to be like apocalyptic here,

but it's things that could happen. I don't think what we're talking about is out of the realm of possibility here. So we got to be prepared for contingencies that we didn't plan for, or even if we did plan for them. I don't know what the answer would be. How do we keep a population in Dubai or Doha

or Kuwait City that doesn't have direct access to. I think probably the uncomfortable answer is that ground troops would eventually be required to have a decisive end to this conflict because we've had extensive economic sanctions. We've had extensive diplomatic interactions in various capacities. We have an information advantage, you know, lots of international pressure. The regime has been under pressure for 47 years. Their entire economy is built around resistance. I mean, it's not like a new concept for them. So I wouldn't be surprised if the only way to actually decisively end this would be ground forces, which is not something I advocate for, like zero percent advocacy for that. I do not think it's a good idea for U.S. forces.

They would be. Yeah, because you have a brain. It would be like a Vietnam-like commitment with probably Vietnam-like ending. And I think it would probably be an unwise move for the U.S. interest generally, not just the Middle East, but generally to do that. But if we're looking at it from a, from a, you know, unbiased rational outsider perspective, if it was like pieces on a chessboard, the only way to get the checkmate is to kill the king and bring it down. I mean, you can't just leave the king running around without ending. And that's probably, unfortunately, the only way militarily to end this. Of course, there could be a diplomatic outcome that would be lopsided toward the United States that we could negotiate,

which seemed to be what we were barreling toward with an uninformed backing into it. But I don't think that that's going to end well for the U.S. on a diplomatic side. thing is I don't see use of ground troops. I see no options for use of ground troops that would be decisive unless you're talking about an invasion force of 300,000 troops. I mean, invading Iran with all the consequences that that would entail. I mean, none of the ground options that have been touted to this state from, you know, seizing islands and Hormuz, occupying cog, occupying, you know, the coastline, going after enriched uranium. None of those seem at all practical and heavily outweighed by the risks. And I just can't, for a moment, think that the United States would plan an invasion.

The war is unpopular as it is. But I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I, you know, I, you know, I, I agree with you. There's nothing. There's no more of the same. There's no escalation path that's going to lead to success, foreseeable success. We've tried everything, right? So what are we going to do now? Hit energy infrastructure, hit nuclear infrastructure harder. It's... Yeah, do some more crimes. Take some pages out of Israel's book. I mean, that's option one. But, I mean, to John's point, the option two is to find, you know, is Qatar and Oman finding some path to another ceasefire and working out some way to reconcile the fact that Iran

wants some form of control or toll authority over Hormuz and the U.S. wants free passage restored. It's really all about Hormuz, I think, at this stage. I don't, I think the U.S. would accept any option that ignored, that ostensibly ignored, even nuclear enrichment at this stage just to get the straights open. And no one's even talked about the proxies recently. You know, I mean, it's totally, no one's talked about control of missile, ballistic missile inventory, any of that stuff. It's all about Hormuz. That's done.

That's done. I mean, if I'm the Iranians, too, like in the room, I'd be like, guys, that's done. We don't even talk about that anymore. To their faces, like, that's over. Yeah, the other thing that's kind of interesting else, is John talking about, you know, or D.U asked about Israel, when Israel be opposed to Saudi Arabia. It's really interesting to watch the dynamics in the Republican Party, specifically around the administration when it comes to relations with Israel. They are distancing themselves rapidly to see J.D. Vance's latest comments. And it's ironic, isn't it, really? Because Netanyahu has nowhere to go now. You know, when it was Obama, he could talk to Congress. But that's just not available anymore when the right wing of the Republican Party, when the crew round Trump are distant, to include Trump himself, are distancing themselves from.

from Israel and even implicitly, in some cases in Vance's case, Vance's case explicitly blaming Israel for problems that we are facing now. It's, you know, if I was, if I was in Israeli, I would be really concerned about that. I think it's unprecedented. Absolutely unprecedented. We didn't even see, we didn't see anything like this under Biden. You know what I mean? Fine.

It was always... No. You know what I mean? Well, we never, we never haphazardly attacked Iran. But... Killed their leader. So... Expected things to be great.

But I think it's... No other president has been that stupid. It's going to have great implications, as John points out for the balance of power in the region, especially as we're talking about this unprecedented, potentially unprecedented uranium enrichment agreement with Saudi Arabia. You know, who knows. knows what follows F-35s all over the place. You know, I mean, there's no doubt about it, that the administration is trying to make good with Gulf states, having realized that it has forfeited a good deal of goodwill in this war.

And I think also you should be watching the elections in, sorry, I was going to mention the Israeli elections coming up October 27th. There is a real threat that B.B. will lose control over domestic Israeli politics and possibly with Gaddi Eisencote, who's a Sephardic Jew, not an Ashkenazi Jew, potentially taking over politics in the country with a coalition with a coalition with very different views about how this conflict should be prosecuted and how relations with the U.S. should be constructed and things like this. So that's going to be, and it's hard to predict what that will look like because it's a coalition-based government. So we don't know exactly who will join that coalition and how those views will influence the state's view toward those

things. So that's an interesting kind of spanner that's going to be thrown into this three-way conflict between Israel, Iran, United States, because U.S. elections in November will also change calculations. So it's a very short time. What are we in July right now? In three months, the politics of two of those three players will change somehow. Somehow. It's hard to say, but it will be different than it is today. I mean, I hate to be the guy that says this, but we need to, like, bite the bullet, for lack of a better term, and don't put good money after bad. Um, because this is going nowhere fast and ground troops is political suicide for anybody who even thinks about and talks about it, uh, seriously in Congress or the White House. Even Trump, who's like Teflon, Don, all that bullshit.

300,000 troops in another fucking forever war. What did he campaign on? Right? Why did so many people back this guy? Even with a 1% casualty rate, you're talking about 3,000. 3,000 Americans dead and a 300,000 person deployment. That's unpalatable. That's almost as many died in 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Completely unpalatable. And you're fighting an enemy who's a conventional military force, not a regular insurgency in the mountains with SA7s. This is an actual military with a lot of resources and international backing from very powerful allies. It would be a very different game than the one we had in Afghanistan and Iraq. You have to assume that like the Pentagon has a force to right like so you know it's going to be way more than one percent obviously uh you know

than it was in iraq or afghanistan um yeah it's a total order there's no doubt there's no exaggeration of numbers by the way i mean think about it we invaded iraq with 150 000 and we realized it was not enough to to do what we needed like what 80 000 contractors well i mean you know and that was against a vastly depleted force and different terrain, smaller country, you name it, yeah. Golf 4-1, how many troops do we have in there? Do you guys know? I want to say a quarter million. I want to say it's more than that.

Because there was the Saudi coalition, there were Syrians fighting with us as well. We had a pretty wide coalition at the time, and this time we won't have that. Riddle me that, a fucking coalition to go into a fucking war. it's guys we're out of us it's crazy what's going on here's crazy you guys both know it and you guys are being gentlemanly and i respect you and love you guys for it but this is fucking crazy and frankly we need to just take the l and negotiate however we need to negotiate because if it's truly about uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons that's what we should focus on and more and more that JCPOA is looking better and better every fucking, every fucking minute.

I don't think it is about nuclear weapons anymore. It's about Shado-Harmuz. I think it's all about Hormuz. You know, and I don't know what's going on behind closed doors, but I, look, if you're a realist, you're going to have to accept Iran's going to get the bomb. I mean, Iran is going to get the bomb. And anyone who says they're not going to get the bomb, tell me how they're not going to get the ball. Explain it because we've done our best. We've shot our ball. And, you know, as John

says, unless we invade the country, we're not going to stop them getting the ball. So politically, diplomatically, of course, we say that's unacceptable. But what do we do? We hedge our bets. And we focus on the things that really matter, getting Hormuz open. And I'm saying go after the link with the the militias in Iraq because those are a real, those are a real threat to the region. They're a threat to us. I'm going to get beaten up for saying this. Hisbola is not a threat to the United States. Okay.

I know if, hey, I get it. I know with Mark was on, he'd waxed lyrical about what happened in the 80s. Look, you know, the Japanese and Germans killed a lot of Americans too. You know, you've got to move on. But Hezbollah is not a direct, they're not our friends. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying his baller's good. I'm saying what is the most direct threat of the United States among the proxies,

the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, no doubt about it. If we want any presence in the region, especially in Syria and even in Jordan, but especially in Iraq, we need to curtail their ability to hurt us. And that is something that we need out of Iraq, I mean, out of Iran, right, along with the the streets being open. And we don't tell them, hey, it's okay to have a nuclear weapon, but we understand beneath the surface they're going to get one. That's my feeling.

Again, I'm going to get beaten up for saying this. No, I don't think it's okay. I'm just saying it's impossible to stop it. It's the reality of the situation. Reality, yeah. Yeah. And so what else do you do? Well, you're trying to affect the balance of power in the region,

other than Israel. Perhaps you've let other regional partners enrich uranium, right? And so, and what's, that's, that looks like that's what's happening. And if you read John's book, Iran's shadow weapons, it is very clear that Iran's prime, their aim, the Iranian regime, is to stay in power. And frankly, after what's gone on over the last, let's call it a year, because I would, I would, I would put in the 12-day war with this. This is all one war.

how would you not be fucked with ever again is if you have like a couple dozen nuclear weapons no one will ever fuck with you again and your regime will be secure forever unless something on the inside happens undoubtedly I mean this whole episode has just reinforced that always feeling good yeah we always end on a happy note it's the best man

I just can't keep hearing like yeah we're gonna keep going at it and like we need to blah blah blah It's just like complete wishful thinking that makes no sense. I mean, the Iranian proxies in Iraq, like the militias, yeah, let's go after them. Let's go after them with special operations or covert ops. You know, the things we're good at. Let's use them. But as far as like we think this is going to happen where they're going to bend to our will,

they have the cards now. We don't. And that's a fact. We gave them the cards. Yeah. Because February 28, the Hormuz was open. It's definitely a segment of the American population, a massive segment that does not understand this. There's a large segment of the population that doesn't give a shit, right, unless it affects prices.

You know, that's probably most of the population. But there's also, as I realized after I wrote that article about, hey, Iran, Iran's kind of had a theory of victory here, and they're pursuing it single-mindedly, and that kind of contrasts them with what we've been doing. I got all kinds of not as much hate mail as my articles about Gaza, but close to it. And it surprised me. You know, a lot of it is from people who are, you know, barely literate, so I don't care. But it really surprised me how ignorant a number of people are. And they think it's treasonous to criticize U.S. policy, which is absurd. You know what I mean?

That's like... It's like the most patriotic thing. you could fucking do, bro. Yeah. Of our democracy are based on being able to... I mean, those people are straight up. They're brain rotted.

Their brains are soft. They have no wrinkles in the brain. They're absolutely fucking brain dead. But you know, you know, that sort of me. I mean, we have some in our audience. I know. Sure. Yeah.

If you're listening right now, you're fucking brain dead. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. They're loyal listeners. And they just... I like and subscribe, though. You know? I apologize.

All right, guys, do us a favor. Check out John's books, Aranch Shadow Weapons, and the Theory of Regular War. Those links are in the description. Andy Milburn, he's putting out a couple chapters here and there for his new book about the war in Gaza. Incredible book. I didn't read the second chapter. The first one was fucking awesome.

It goes into, like, the lead-up to October 7th. Really, really good. That book should be coming out soon, but those chapters are out in his substack. That link is in the description as well. Check it out. Obviously, Andy's memoir, when the Tempest Gathers, great, great book. What else? Patreon.com slash the Teamhouse.

Help us support the show. You get episodes ad-free and early. And you could send us messages that will actually read because the rest of them, I don't look at the regular comments. I know you guys sometimes dabbled, but I don't give a shit what anyone has to say, frankly. But yeah, that's it. Guys, a pleasure as always. I love you.

Yeah, great talk. Bye, everyone. Yeah, great talk. Say you love me too, John. Jesus Christ. I don't love. Thanks, guys. This is very distasteful.

Hey, guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about the Teamhouse podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's totally free. And what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, the things that are on the Teamhouse. on our geopolitics podcast, Eyes On, things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high side, anything else that we have going on, books we recommend, upcoming guests that we have coming on the show, and also filtering in some fun stuff in there as well. If you go and check it out, we send it out just once a week.

We don't want to spam you guys. It's just a kind of roll up of all of our content on a weekly basis. you can find our newsletter at teamhousepodcast.kitt.com slash join. Again, the website for that is teamhousepodcast.com slash join. So we hope to see you there. The link will be down in the description.